f you’re a history buff of any age, you will not be disappointed by The Good Fight: How World War II Was Won. Stephen E. Ambrose, a world-renowned author and historian, trumpets the feats of unsung American heroes as he chronicles the major military campaigns in Europe, Asia, North Africa, the Atlantic and Pacific arenas. Significant events including the Manhattan Project, the holocaust, the war conferences, war crimes trials and the Marshall Plan are woven into the fabric of this comprehensive WWII compendium.

In our age of technology, smart bombs, Star Wars movies and missile defense strategies, the younger generation will be astounded to learn that our armed forces trained for combat with wooden rifles, flour bags for grenades and trucks for tanks. Even the most knowledgeable reader may be struck by how unprepared the United States was for battle. By all accounts, we should have lost the war; but we didn’t. It is with heart-swelling pride that Ambrose attributes our ultimate success to the determination, initiative, commitment and courage of America’s fighting forces. Specific examples such as Operation Husky profile an American soldier who declined individual recognition and promotion to remain with his regiment. These men fought out of duty and loyalty and succeeded because of faith in a cause greater than their own. Authentic WWII photographs are very effective in tandem with the written account of events. Together with numerous maps, there are 38 full-page photos plus quarter-page photo inserts on the text pages. All of them are moments of triumph and reflections of devastation that transport the reader to another time and place.

Ambrose’s The Good Fight is a stunning portrait of America’s innate goodness as a beacon to freedom that could not be extinguished or even diminished by the world’s most ruthless tyrants. America rose to meet its greatest challenge and therein lies a lesson for us all.

C. Elizabeth Davis is a former marketing director for the education division of Turner Broadcasting System.

The extraordinary talents and outstanding accomplishments of John Adams tend to be overshadowed by the illustrious and colorful careers of his contemporaries George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Adams himself thought his own major attributes were "candor, probity, and decision," and those qualities were crucial as he shared in the leadership of a revolutionary people who made the difficult transition to a stable, responsible, representative government. David McCullough, who has received National Book Awards for both history and biography and whose Truman received the Pulitzer Prize, superbly captures the life and times of this remarkable figure in his compelling new book, John Adams.

In 1787, after completing a book that he thought would make him unpopular, Adams wrote to a friend, "Popularity was never my mistress, nor was I ever, or shall I ever be a popular man. But one thing I know, a man must be sensible of the errors of the people, and upon his guard against them, and must run the risk of their displeasure sometimes, or he will never do them any good in the long run." That quote, McCullough says, is "about as concise a synopsis of Adams’ course through public life as could be found."

Certainly Adams made mistakes in judgment. But when one surveys the range of his thought and actions during his entire public career, it is remarkable how astute he was in both the long and short terms. For example, Adams chaired the committee that asked Jefferson to draft a Declaration of Independence. But, after much revision, it was Adams whose speech to the Continental Congress convinced the delegates to pass it. As a delegate from New Jersey remembered: "[Adams was] the man to whom the country is most indebted for the great measure of independency. . . . It was he who sustained the debate, and by the force of reasoning demonstrated not only the justice, but the expediency of the measure."

In February 1778, when Adams was appointed to serve as one of three men to negotiate an alliance with France, "It marked," for Adams, "the beginning of what would become a singular odyssey, in which he would journey farther in all, both by sea and land, than any other leader of the American cause." He would help negotiate the peace treaty that ended the war with Great Britain in 1783 and become our first ambassador to that country in 1785. His most important service abroad, however, may have been negotiating for bank loans. "With his success obtaining Dutch loans at the critical hour of the Revolution," McCullough says, "he felt, as did others, that he had truly saved his country."

As the second U.S. president, he presided over a divided country and a divided party. Despite these disadvantages, under his leadership the Navy was greatly strengthened and proved decisive in keeping the young country out of war with France. As Adams wrote to a friend: "I desire no other inscription over my gravestone than: ‘Here lies John Adams, who took upon himself the responsibility of peace with France in the year 1800.’ "

McCullough skillfully interweaves accounts of his subject’s private and public lives, focusing in particular on Adams’ marriage to Abigail Smith, who was "in all respects his equal." The author’s insight into the relationship and, at times, rivalry between Adams and Thomas Jefferson is also of particular interest. Their unique correspondence after both were out of office remains one of the most important literary treasures from the Founding Fathers. "The level and range of their discourse were always above and beyond the ordinary," McCullough writes. "At times memory failed; often hyperbole entered in . . . they were two of the leading statesmen of their time, but also two of the finest writers, and they were showing what they could do."

This exceptional biography should be enjoyed by anyone who wants to explore in some detail the complexity of the Revolutionary and Early American eras as experienced by one who was a crucial mover and shaker.

Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.

o Escobar became the godfather of international cocaine trafficking by offering a choice to anybody standing in his way: plata o plomo (silver or lead). Eventually, Escobar himself got both.

In 1989, Forbes magazine listed him as the seventh richest man in the world. Four years later the end came for Escobar when a bullet entered his brain. Of the 15-month manhunt that led to Escobar’s death, Morris D. Busby, then U.S. ambassador to Colombia, said, “Lots of things happened that no one is ever going to talk about.” In Killing Pablo, a fascinating new piece of investigative reporting, Mark Bowden tracks down and discloses many of those “things.” In chronicling the reign and ruin of Escobar and his empire, Bowden adds new content and context to the story of the man he calls “the world’s greatest outlaw.” Escobar terrorized and corrupted Colombia to its core through years of bombings, kidnappings and murders of police, politicians, judges, prosecutors and journalists and their relatives. Despite being tracked by modern surveillance equipment, Escobar slipped from hideout to hideout, frustrating a force said to number 3,000 Colombian policemen augmented by elite U.S. units.

Escobar’s demise was hastened by vigilantes whose families he had victimized. Adopting his style as their own, they torched Escobar’s lavish homes and killed, by their estimate, some 300 people who aided him. Bowden, a long-time Philadelphia Inquirer staffer, explores the vital contribution the United States made to the manhunt, as well as the reluctance of some Pentagon officers to become involved in lethal acts that they feared would incriminate them back home. News junkies might think they already know enough about the life and death of Pablo Escobar, but even they will be awed by the magnitude of the carnage, the intricacy of the manhunt and the legal and political complications that arose when two sovereign nations mixed law enforcement and military missions. With the same careful research and clarity that marked his Black Hawk Down, a 1999 National Book Award finalist, Bowden has neatly put it all together.

Alan Prince is the former editor of the Miami Herald’s Latin America edition.

uthor Gerald Nicosia explains it, the American soldiers who fought in Vietnam lost two wars: one in Southeast Asia to gain and hold territory and one at home to gain public understanding of their life-warping experiences. The Vietnam veterans’ movement instrumental in exposing America’s duplicity during the late ’60s and early ’70s is the subject of Nicosia’s new book Home to War. The author brings a dramatist’s eye to this mammoth narrative, playing out hundreds of separate stories through the personalities of the participants. An exhaustive work (Nicosia says he interviewed 600 people for the book), Home to War offers accounts of incendiary demonstrations and loud “rap” sessions, Kafkaesque court trials and petty infighting, majestic displays of solidarity, moments of euphoria and days of despair. Not only did the vets fight to expose the war as a human catastrophe, they also struggled to convince an indifferent public and a hostile government that their wounds particularly the psychological ones were of a different sort than America was used to.

Instead of relying on the loftiness of political themes to do the work, the author uses recurring characters to endow his chronicle with a sense of direction and momentum. Overall, Nicosia strikes a pleasing balance between a vivid but fragmented oral history and a coherent narration of facts. While the veterans have scored some triumphs, Nicosia says, theirs has not been a story with a happy ending. “At the [Vietnam Veterans of America] convention in 1999,” he notes, “someone pointed out that most of the vets balding, gray- or white-haired, deeply wrinkled, with huge pot bellies or else emaciated, many walking slowly with canes looked as though they were in their 60s or 70s, when in fact they were actually 20 years younger. Premature aging has been universally observed among Vietnam veterans, and in some respects it has already been medically verified.” And these were just the visible scars.

Edward Morris writes for BookPage from Nashville.

Irish in AmericaOn the same theme is Maureen Dezell’s Irish America: Coming Into Clover, with the second subtitle “The Evolution of a People and a Culture.” A staff writer for the Boston Globe, Dezell writes entertainingly and provides rather more historical perspective than Harty does in her browser book. She also goes further back than the recently departed century. Dezell gets into some surprising and fascinating topics. These even include an analysis of the ways the Irish rib each other about everything, comparing the habit to certain aspects of humor among African Americans. She also looks at how female purity and passivity were drilled into the new young Irish Americans after the Famine, and how stereotypes became scapegoats in all sorts of situations. She even thoughtfully critiques anti – Irish attitudes in E. L. Doctorow’s novel Ragtime.Michael Sims is fond of Irish coffee and greatly admires redheads.